Wait, Jamie Fraser isn’t dead in Outlander! Well, no, he’s not, but Diana Gabaldon has some interesting thoughts on the age he was when he did die.
The first thing you will think reading that title is that Jamie isn’t dead. Any Outlander fan should know that, right? Well, it’s true. Jamie is alive and well in the Outlander Season 7A finale. In the books, he’s still alive in Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone.
However, there is an interesting comment from Diana Gabaldon. This comment connects to Jamie’s ghost, which was seen in the first episode of the series. It’s in the first book, although we don’t get confirmation that it is Jamie in the books. With the show, it’s clearly Jamie just looking at him.
So, at some point, Jamie is dead. How old is he meant to be?
Jamie’s death and ghost in Outlander semi-explained
According to an interview on the Outlander Podcast back in 2014, Diana Gabaldon shared that Jamie is around 25 when he dies.
That’s the age of the ghost. We all know that Jamie has been on the brink of death many times. It looks like for a time, he was dead.
However, we can also play with the idea that death has no time. Let’s take a look at Titanic for example. At the end, an old Rose dies in her sleep. In death, she is her 20-something self again on the Titanic with all those who died in the sinking. Death has no time.
There is a theory that Jamie’s spirit traveled through time to see Claire. That is what brought Claire back in time to him at the very beginning. Gabaldon says that time isn’t a loop in her story, but I can’t envision it any other way. We all have to do what makes sense in our heads when it comes to time travel unless it’s explicitly explained.
Either way, Jamie’s spirit was 25 when he went to see Claire. That could connect to his near-death experience on the battlefield at Culloden. Is it possible that he did temporarily die or he was close enough to death at that point?